Students' awareness of reading strategies

Abstract

This study investigated (a) the university students’ existing reading strategy repertoires, (b) the impact of instruction in top-down reading strategies on their strategic performance, (c) the strategies that students were able to apply in their reading processes, and (d) the relationship between the students’ reported frequency of strategy use and the employment of strategies in their reading practice. The study was conducted with 20 intermediate level students and their classroom teacher in the School of Foreign Languages at Erciyes University in the spring semester of 2006. After the first administration of the Reading Strategy Questionnaire, a threeweek explicit strategy instruction in top-down reading strategies was provided. Following the treatment, the same questionnaire was administered a second time in order to determine the effects of the consciousness-raising program. Think-aloud protocols and post-treatment interviews conducted with 5 volunteer students enriched the study with qualitative data. The statistical correlation of the pre- and post-questionnaires showed that there were significant increases in the means of top-down strategies after the treatment while a slight decrease occurred in students’ bottom-up strategy use. However, think-aloud protocols demonstrated that students tended to use bottom-up strategies more in their reading practice. These findings were also supported by the interviews.